Zero. Part 18

Lillian closed her eyes. "Do you suppose that his death has caused him to disappear? As if he never existed?"

"Certainly I didn't mean to imply that."

She stared at him. "Whatever Philip was, whatever Philip did, cannot be altered by his death."

She looked very pale. The lack of sunshine on her flesh had turned her skin translucent. It seemed to Jonas that she was as beautiful now as she had been when he had first met her. She had lost none of her l.u.s.ter; she was still desirable.

But not to Jonas. He wondered how long it would be before the unattached men in Lillian's circle would come nosing around. Her job as her father's a.s.sistant brought her into contact with the most high level diplomatic personnel from around the world.

All of them would want a piece of Lillian now. Jonas smiled inwardly at that.

He had kept his personal animosity toward her carefully in check all these years. But now, in the ultimate moment that her grief created, he could allow it to come up, he could turn it over and over like a precious artifact.

It had always been a question of the life he shared with Philip or the life Philip had shared with Lillian. It seemed to Jonas that Lillian had never understood the men's need for secrecy. She had wanted to be a part of everything that had been Philip. And when she couldn't, she had blamed Jonas for it. And because of her anger, he supposed, she had driven a wedge between Philip and himself.

It occurred to Jonas, sadly, inexorably, that his friendship with Philip never had been the same after Lillian's appearance.

And still, knowing this, after all this time, he could not hate her. She had loved Philip. And out of his own love for Philip, Jonas had made her part of his adopted family.

It was difficult to believe that he was sitting across from her and that Philip would not at any moment walk through the door. Lillian and Philip. Much to his dismay, Jonas discovered that he could not think about the one without thinking of the other.

"The consequences of Philip's life," Lillian was saying now, "will surely outlast the consequences of his death."

Too bad she knows nothing of either, Jonas thought. Or is it? In this case, maybe not. That last blow would no doubt crush her entirely. Impulsively, he reached out, put his hand over hers. Her marriage band disappeared beneath his palm. "Of course they will," Jonas said. "Philip was responsible for great things. Who should know that better than the two of us?"

"I'd prefer that you didn't patronize me," Lillian said. "You're well aware that for years I knew nothing about what Philip did. That was something that was always between the two of you. I never liked that, but I came to accept it. Eventually."

Lillian smiled. "But don't concern yourself, Jonas. The secrets you and Philip kept are in no danger from me."

He frowned. It had always amazed him, the transformation of Lillian Hadley Doss from USO singer to a mover within diplomatic and military circles. She seemed out of place in this office of power, attended to by the stern-faced major, every inch the strict disciplinarian that Lillian's father still was.

Was the incongruity of it, he asked himself, because of her beauty? Because she was a woman? "What do you mean?" he asked.

Perhaps she heard the uneasiness in his voice. She kept her smile. "I work here, for my father, remember, Jonas? General Hadley is still your boss as well as mine. He runs all the bureaucratic interference for BITE. He's had the ear of every president since Truman, and with good reason. He's the finest military strategist this country's seen since the turn of the century.

"There are no secrets anymore, Jonas. Not from me, at least. I have gotten ameasure of satisfaction from that. It was always you and Philip. I was always left out."

"That was business, Lil."

"It still is, Jonas." Her smile widened. "Only now, secrets are my stock-in-trade too." She put down her cup. "That's why I asked you to come as soon as you could." She held out a red-bound folder. It was stamped top secret and eyes only. Across one comer were the double black stripes that cautioned that the material contained inside could not be duplicated or taken out of the office of origination.

"What is it?" Jonas said as he took the folder from her. But there was already a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Read it," Lillian said. She poured herself more coffee as Jonas flipped open the file. She took out her Equal, emptied two packets into the black coffee.

With a silver spoon she stirred it around and around.

"Jesus!" Jonas said. "Jesus Christ Almighty!" He looked up. "Lillian-"

"If s true, Jonas," Lillian said. "That's the two-year report my father's been doing on BITE."

"I knew nothing about this!" Jonas said.

"Neither did I. Until now." She stared at him. "Is it true, Jonas? What the report says? About the intelligence leaks? The breakdown of networks over the past six years?"

"Certain ones, yes," Jonas said. "But that's the nature of the game, Lil." He hit the folder with the back of his hand. "But this! Christ, your old man wants to shut us down!"

"Permanently," Lillian said."That's the recommendation of the report. And it's the recommendation my father will make to the president when they meet next month."

"Your father has seen the report, then?"

Lillian shook her head. "Not yet. He's scheduled back from Poland next week sometime. Right now, because of negotiations, his itinerary's a bit vague."

Jonas sat back, took a deep breath. "Why are you showing this to me, Lil?"

She sipped her coffee, silent.

He c.o.c.ked his head. "What is it you've been trying to prove all these years in competing with Philip and me? That you're our equal? Because you're not, you know."

"Contrary to the male's mistaken way of thinking," she said, "women do not want to be men."

"No?" His tone was skeptical. "Then what is it they do want, since equality isn't in the cards?"

She contemplated him for a time before answering. "Just a measure of respect, Jonas. That isn't so much to ask, is it?"

"Respect."

"Yes." Lillian's glance took in the red file on his lap. "No one else could have gotten that, Jonas. Let alone got you a peek at it."

"What is it you want in return?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. We're family, aren't we, in a way?"

When she was finished with her coffee, she held out her hand. "I'll have to take that."

Jonas gave her the d.a.m.ning report.

"Do you know where your secrets are going?" she asked.

"To the Russians," he said. "But that's about all we've been able to find out."

"Well," she said, "you'd better find out who's selling you out before my father returns. He reads this report and BITE will be chopped up, shipped out in so many pieces you'll never recognize it again."

The major came in, delivered a sheaf of reports to Lillian's desk. He left without a word. When they were alone again, she said, "Where has Michael gone?"

The question he had dreaded. "Away."Lillian's back stiffened. "He's my son, and you know where he is."

"Do I?"

"He came to say goodbye. He wouldn't tell me where he was going or why. But I can guess. You've swallowed him up," she said. "Just as you swallowed Philip up."

"I don't understand that," Jonas said. "Philip did what he wanted to do. He always did."

"Without you," Lillian said, "he would have found something else."

"Like what?" Jonas was openly contemptuous. "Computer programming?"

"Perhaps. In any case, he would be alive now."

"Don't blame me for Philip's death. I have enough responsibilities to bear."

"I'll just bet you do," Lillian said.

"What does that mean?" he said slowly and carefully.

"You have Michael," Lillian said. "You are the only person he could turn to."

She was trembling with anger. "If you turn him into another Philip, I swear to you, Jonas, I will make you pay."

"Calm yourself," Jonas said, alarmed. "I've done nothing of the sort." He told her about what had taken place in his office. About Philip's "will," Michael's induction into the world of espionage, where Michael had gone. He had not wanted to tell her any of it, of course, knowing how she felt about his role in Philip's career, knowing how vulnerable she was now, after her husband's death. But he had had no choice. She had told him as much when she had allowed him to see her father's Eyes Only report on BITE. He was grateful to her for that.

Now he watched for any signs of a breakdown. He knew that his sending her son out on the same path that had gotten her husband killed was a gamble. But it was a gamble dictated by desperate times. Besides, he told himself, it was what Philip seemed to have wanted.

Try telling Lillian that. He did.

"Lil," he said after he was finished, "are you all right?"

Lillian was very pale. He could see her teeth beneath her parted lips. They seemed to be chattering. She held her elbows in against her body. Now he could see that she was rocking gently back and forth.

"It's happened." Her voice was a feathery whisper, but it chilled him just the same. "My worst nightmare has come true. Oh Jonas, look what you've done!" Her voice suddenly rose in volume to a kind of pain-filled wail. "You stole my husband from me. Because of you, we don't know whether Audrey is alive or dead. Now you've put my son in the same deadly jeopardy! My G.o.d! My dear G.o.d!"

Audrey awoke with a start into darkness.

She was swimming through a dream, a diver, down in the depths too long, reaching upward toward the watery sunlight high above her. Even while the cool quiet of the ocean tried its best to hold on to her.

The ocean of sleep.

She had been dreaming that she was bound to a chair.

Wrists and ankles were blue and bloated from the cruel bite of wire flex. She had trouble breathing because wire was wrapped around her torso, over and under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her back was arched; there was tension in every muscle.

The darkness was like velvet, thick, soft and impenetrable.

It began to move. To swirl, to shift, to coalesce. And as it did so, Audrey felt a fear crawling inside her, making her breath come fast and hot, making her mouth dry and her armpits wet.

Dear G.o.d, she thought in her dream. Make it go away. Not knowing what it was.

The darkness possessed shape now, though she could not say just what that shape was. The darkness pulsed with life, and it was drawing closer to her.

In her mind, an echo: There is no escape.

She had always been certain that she would live forever.

At her age, fifty years was forever. Now she knew that she was going to die.

Her teeth chattered, her mind jabbered. Some elemental animal inside herself was trying hysterically to get out, to escape the doomed mortal coil in whichit was trapped.

The darkness was upon Audrey now. She could feel its steeping heat on her thighs, could feel its warm breath on her lips. The presence was unmistakably male, and she felt another kind of heat. Her own sudden arousal terrified her even more.

Then the darkness began to penetrate her, and she began to die ...

Awakening with a start into darkness.

She shuddered, still partially inside her dream. She wanted to wipe the sweat from her forehead, could not.

She found herself bound to a chair.

Michael thought: If Paris is a city of dusty browns, greens and blues, then Maui is an island of pastels: turquoise, pinks and lavenders. What surprised him was that it was a place where the color umber was impossible to imagine.

As opposed to j.a.pan, where, among the slopes of Yoshino, where Tsuyo had taught him about life, umber was the dominant color.

He did not think that another spot on the globe could affect him as deeply as did Paris and Yoshino. In Paris, his work matured. In Yoshino, it had begun.

And this is the essence of what remained: that one employed strategy in every aspect of one's life. There was strategy in putting brush to canvas, in weaving cloth or planting a garden. When conflict arose-as it invariably did-one automatically sought a strategy first. Using a weapon was the strategy of last resort, which was why he had refused Jonas's offer of a gun.

It was early afternoon. The sun, still high in the sky, caused golden light to cascade across the enormous expanses of the sugarcane fields. To his right, the West Maui Mountains rose, haloed by misty cloud. His guidebook, read during the long flight, told him that within that shadowed creva.s.se lay lao Valley, home of the ancient Hawaiian G.o.ds.

Michael picked up his rental Jeep. As he stowed his luggage in back, he felt for and found the canvas satchel containing the katana that Uncle Sammy had promised would be there.

In accordance with the strategy Michael had worked out on the plane, he stopped in Kahului to make a number of' purchases, the first of which was a cheap black satchel. An hour later, he was driving onto Honoapiilani Highway.

He was near Maalaea Bay, heading south. Very soon, he knew, the highway would swing around what the locals called the Beautiful Woman's Chin and begin beading northwest. Maui, seen from the air, had the aspect of the bust of a woman. Southeast, where the enormous dormant volcano Mount Ha-leakala rose two miles into the air, was the upper torso. Kahului, where Michael had just landed, was one side of her neck, Maalaea Bay, the other side. Where Michael was headed, Kapalua and, ultimately, Kahakuloa, formed the woman's head.

The highway ended up past Kapalua. A vast twenty-five hundred-acre pineapple plantation surrounded a secluded resort with a pair of remarkable golf courses. As Michael turned left at the end of the highway, he saw evidence of these golf courses in the superbly manicured greens, the rippleless sand traps, curved like perfect wounds under a plastic surgeon's scalpel.

It was difficult to imagine that barely a mile ahead, the road-what there was of it-wound treacherously across the spine of another in the chain of volcanic mountains that dominated northwest Maui.

Past Fleming Beach Park, the road narrowed considerably. There was no sign of human habitation, no manicured and terraced lawns, no tile-roofed villas climbing amid fragrant sprays of bougainvillea.

Instead, thick, tangly foliage overgrew the margins of the road. Ma.s.sive outcroppings of rock, ocher and steely-blue, pushed their way toward the center of the road.

When the pavement gave out altogether, what remained was a heavily rutted dirt track no more than a vehicle's width wide. Muddy and slippery, it wound vertiginously close to the parapet edge of the cliff face. At places there was close to a quarter of a mile drop to the churning ocean below.

Now the road had barely enough room for two cars to pa.s.s side by side. On oneside was the sheer face of the cliff rising upward, on the other, an equally sheer drop downward to the sea.

Michael had put the Jeep into four-wheel drive. All about him the twitterings of birds could be heard, behind which he could just perceive, now and again as he jarred around this hairpin bend or that, the musical tinkling of a waterfall.

Glimpses of rolling meadows straight out of Scotland where brindled cows lay or stood in stultified poses as if they had not moved in centuries.